foregone them so long, and are fain to recommend them to all the world.

Polly and I had gotten on reasonably well up to this time; but before we
became conscious of any change, we found ourselves drawn closer together
by a multitude of small interests common to both. After twenty-five
years of married life it will compensate any man to take a little time
from business and worry that he may become acquainted with his wife. A
few fortunate men do this early in life, and they draw compound interest
on the investment; but most of us feel the cares of life so keenly that
we take them home with us to show in our faces and to sit at our tables
and to blight the growth of that cheerful intercourse which perpetuates
love and cements friendship in the home as well as in the world.

There were no serious cares nowadays, and time passed so smoothly at
Four Oaks that we wondered at the picnic life that had fallen to us. The
village of Exeter was alive in all things social. The city families who
had farms or country places near the village were so fond of them that
they rarely closed them for more than two or three months, and these
months were as likely to come in summer as in winter.

Our friends the Gordons made Homestead Farm their permanent residence,
though they kept open house in town. Beyond the Gordons' was the modest
home of an Irish baronet, Sir Thomas O'Hara. Sir Tom was a bachelor of
sixty. He had run through two fortunes (as became an Irish baronet) in
the racing field and at Homburg, and as a young man he had lived ten
years at Limmer's tavern in London. When not in training to ride his own
steeple-chasers, he was putting up his hands against any man in England
who would face him for a few friendly rounds. He was not always
victorious, either in the field, before the green cloth, or in the ring;
but he was always a kind-hearted gentleman who would divide his last
crown with friend or foe, and who could accept a beating with grace and
unruffled spirit.

He could never ride below the welter weight, and after a few years he
outgrew this weight and was forced to give up the least expensive of
his diversions. The green cloth now received more of his attention,
and, as a matter of course, of his money. Things went badly with him,
and he began to see the end of his second fortune before he called a
halt. Bad times in Ireland seriously reduced his rents, and he was
forced to dispose of his salable estates. Then he came to